They lied. My wait time was a little over 90 minutes, but the best was yet to come.
Colorado has a convoluted DMV/license plate system. Perhaps other states do, too, but ours is pretty messed up. Add to that system the current economic problems that result in reduced services and staff, and here is what you get:
When I sold my Audi (trade-in) somehow the new owner received a copy of my registration for the vehicle. This allowed the new owner/somebody to register my vehicle plates in their name. This is not supposed to be possible (as I was told repeatedly today) since vehicle plates are assigned to a person, not a specific vehicle. The really amazing part is how the plates were assigned to somebody else while they were in my possession. Everything I was told today says you can’t transfer them to another party without physical possession of the plates.
After about an hour of checking with supervisors, updating my records and phoning the other Denver DMV branch offices, the clerk “thinks” she has it all sorted out. Hopefully I won’t ever be stopped by the police and find out otherwise. The critical part of getting the plate snafu sorted was that I have a half-year of paid “credit” on those plates and I wanted to apply that amount to my new vehicle registration fee.
I felt a little badly that my turn at the window was taking so long. I could feel the eyes of the 100+ people waiting their turns burning a hole into my back. It would have helped if Denver DMV had more than 3 of the 10 windows running…
Two and a half hours and net $344 later, I walked out of the DMV with the same plates with which I entered. There’s no telling if they’re really “my” plates or not.